Storm leaves with tail between its legs

MONTEGUT, La. -- Hurricane Lili gave Louisiana's coast a 100 mph battering Thursday that swamped streets, knocked out power and snapped trees. But residents were thankful it was not the monster they were warned was coming.\n"It looks like we were lucky," said Gov. Mike Foster, who requested and received a statewide disaster declaration from President Bush.\nMore than a million people in Texas and Louisiana had been told to clear out as the hurricane closed in with terrifying intensity. But in an overnight transformation even forecasters could not fully explain, Lili weakened from a 145-mph, Category 4 hurricane to a Category 2.\nAnd after its center crossed land at Marsh Island, the storm's winds dropped again, falling by midday to 75 mph, barely a hurricane. By evening, Lili was a tropical storm with winds of 50 mph, and instead of a potentially catastrophic 25-foot storm surge, more manageable surges of 6 to 10 feet blew in.\n"A lot of Ph.D.s will be written about this," said National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield.\nNo deaths were reported along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Injuries included two people hurt in Louisiana in a roof collapse. Earlier this week, Lili killed eight people in the Caribbean.\n"Better to make a blank trip than get caught in a hurricane and have a massive loss of life," said Harvey Hart of Port Arthur, Texas, who spent the night with his family in a high school cafeteria shelter.\nStill, Lili was a powerful storm, with gusts as high as 92 mph in New Iberia hurling pieces of metal through the air, felling tree limbs and blowing down a 50-foot-high sign at the Holiday Inn.\nIt tore roofs from homes and buildings, snapped trees and knocked out power to an estimated 345,000 customers statewide. About 1,300 homes and businesses in Lafayette and New Orleans lost phone service.\nIt also flooded much of Montegut, about 40 miles southwest of New Orleans.\n"I'd say right now at least 75 percent of the town got water in it," said Spencer Rhodes, fire chief in the town of 4,000, where water cascaded through at least three breaks in a hurricane protection levee.\nRescue crews in big National Guard trucks evacuated 500 to 600 Montegut residents who had failed to heed calls for evacuation.\n"The water just kept piling up and piling up," said Sam LeBouef, as he dragged an aluminum boat down the middle of a flooded street. "I just had to go."\nHe said his house had never flooded and he had never had reason to evacuate. But this time he had water in his carport up to his knees.\nIt was even worse in Grand Isle, the vulnerable barrier island community south of New Orleans that was swamped by Tropical Storm Isidore last week. "Most of the island is under water," Police Chief Edward Bradberry said.\nBy the time Lili arrived, some 900,000 people had been ordered or advised to leave coastal Louisiana and 330,000 in far eastern Texas. Nearly 17,000 of them stayed at 98 emergency shelters.\n"There is no real way to tell how many people evacuated," said Col. Jay Mayeaux of the Louisiana National Guard. "Some of them could have gone to mama's house."\nAll in all, though, Lili was not as bad as forecasters feared. In Port Arthur, one of the areas evacuated, the hurricane did little more than spin off thunderstorms, leaving some broken tree limbs in the streets.\n"I'm the picture of a man who's relieved," said Jim Anderson, emergency preparedness director for Louisiana's Iberia Parish. "I know how serious it could have been."\nAt least six tornadoes toppled trees in Mississippi, but no major damage was reported.\nRonald Bennett, 66, drank a beer outside a Bay St. Louis, Miss., convenience store as he watched National Guard troops drive down his flooded street. He had spent the night in his van in the store's parking lot, just like he did during Isidore.\n"I've been sleeping here more than at my house," he said.\nMayfield, who predicted Lili would end the day as a 39-mph tropical storm, was at a loss to explain the hurricane's fluctuations in the Gulf of Mexico. While the colder waters in the northern Gulf might explain a weakening of the hurricane, they do not account for why it had gained strength so dramatically earlier in the night.